Our interest in open data, mapping, and visualization comes out of a belief that accessible, high quality, well-organized and well-filtered information is key to helping nonprofits do their work better and more efficiently. Giving nonprofits up-to-date, easy-to-use data means less wasted time, fewer service gaps, and a clearer understanding of impact. The trick, then, is getting the data in the same room with the service providers.

Here’s an example. In California alone, there are hundreds if not thousands of nonprofit organizations dedicated to children’s health issues. How will they know, specifically, where their services are needed most? And how can they measure impact or change over time? They could spend time and energy finding and developing their own, closed data sets… But increasingly, with the surge of interest in open source, visualized data – that route might be less and less necessary.

Kidsdata.org, a project of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, has been publishing some great looking data on indicators that impact children’s health. A few of the data categories: Child Safety, Education, Physical Health, Family Economics. Nearly all of these are likely to pertain, directly or indirectly, to various child-related missions. Take, for example, this map of 2008 high school drop out rates in California. It’s likely to be of interest to an organization like Children Now, who are concerned with child education issues. Or this set of data on kids lacking health insurance – possibly useful to the Children’s Health Initiative of Orange County, who are working to boost insurance enrollment of children in that area. And the Children’s Bureau could connect with this map of 2008 reported cases of child abuse, also sorted by age, background, and type.

Click the image for a closer look (link).

Another resource worth mentioning here is HealthyCity.org, a really robust data provider for all things public health related in Los Angeles County, CA. That project isn’t skimping in the geospatial department either – and it’s worth its own blog post all together (later!). For nonprofits active in children’s health, their maps on health care services of all kinds in that area is a can’t miss. Also: we hear that HealthyCity.org plans to launch HealthyCity California, the statewide version, in early 2010. Have sneak peak at that, here.

*Ever find great data, but disappointed when you realize it’s in a terrible format? KidsData.org obviously thought that one through: the site allows you to download their data via Excel file, export charts and graphs, and create PDF reports on the fly. Nice.